In the week since Scott Hutchison’s death I’ve been listening to a lot of Frightened Rabbit, obviously. Less obviously, I’ve also gone back to the album Honestly, This World by The Moth & The Mirror, a short-lived Scottish band that featured (amongst others) Stacey Sievwright and Gordon Skene (who was also playing with Frightened Rabbit at the time). I love this album, in particular the tracks “Germany” and “Fire”.
What I hadn’t spotted until this week, probably because I’ve only ever seen it at tiny sizes, was the airplane on the album cover that all the birds are following. The phrase “Honestly, this world…” already yields a mental picture of someone shaking their damn head. Now I see it in the artwork as well, it’s a beautifully subtle verbal and visual facepalm.
This is actually similar to a tattoo idea I had been toying with: a band of bird silhouettes around my arm, with somewhere amongst them a sly Airbus 320 — to represent the amount of flying I have done over the last five years. I might still revisit this! If I do, this album cover will give it the extra weight of a wonderfully obscure musical in-joke.